Rollestone.  You might as well say that sounds differ because their aerial vibrations differ, but those vibrations only differ because the force makes them differ which is acting upon them.  They don’t generate tunes, but convey them.  And the result, so far as our hearing is concerned, depends upon what are called the acoustic conditions under which the vibrations take place.  Just so the brain possesses no generating function of its own; it deals with and transmits the ideas and emotions projected upon it according to the organic conditions by which it may be affected at the time, whether those ideas and emotions are produced by external stimuli, or apparently, but only apparently, as I believe, owe their origin to genesis in the brain itself.  In the one case the brain is vibrating to the touch of an external force, in the other to one that is internal and unseen, just as the air does when it transmits sound, whether you see the cause which produces it or not; and the mystery which remains to be fathomed, but which I do not admit to be unfathomable until somebody tries to fathom it, is the nature of those unseen forces.

Germsell.  How would you propose to try and fathom it?

Rollestone.  By experiment:  I know of no other way.  The forces which generate emotions and ideas must possess a moral quality:  the experiments must therefore be moral experiments.

Germsell.  How do you set to work to experimentalise morally?

Rollestone.  As the process must of necessity be a purely personal one, carried on, if I may use the expression, in one’s own moral organism, I have a certain delicacy in attempting to describe it.  In fact, Lady Fritterly, if you will allow me to say so, as the whole subject which has been under discussion this afternoon is the most profoundly solemn which can engage the attention of a human being, I shrink from entering upon it as fully as I would do under other circumstances.  I people begin to want a new religion because it is the fashion to want one, I venture to predict that they will never find it.  If they want a new religion because they can’t come up to the moral standard of the one they have got, then I would advise them to look rather to that unseen force within them, which I have been attempting to describe to Mr Germsell, for the potency which may enable them to reach it.

Lady Fritterly.  Indeed, Mr Rollestone, we are all exceedingly in earnest.  I never felt so serious in my life.  Of course this London life must all seem very frivolous to you; but that we can’t help, you know.  We can’t all go away and make moral experiments like you.  What we feel is, that we ought all to endeavour as much as possible to introduce a more serious tone into society.  We want to get rid of the selfishness, and the littlenesses, and the petty ambitions and envyings, and the scandals that go on.  Don’t we, Louisa, dear?  And you can’t think how grateful I am to Lord Fondleton for having given me the pleasure of your acquaintance.  I hope I may often see you; I am sure you would do us all so much good.  You will always find me at home on Sunday afternoons at this hour.